An avid cinéaste, time-tripping through the fourth dimension, in search of beauty, truth and timeless escapist entertainment

Saturday, July 15, 2006

COTE D'AZUR (2005): I just saw this delightful comic souffle of a film on Here! TV last night. In French with subtitles (it was titled Crustacés et Coquillages in France), this gentle sex farce concerns an attractive family's summer vacation on the French Riviera. The mother is having an affair with a horny older guy who keeps showing up nude in the bushes...the father is turned on by his teenage son's gay friend and rekindles his relationship with a humpy plumber...the daughter is screwing a biker...and the long-haired, 16-year-old son keeps jerking off in the shower because he can't find a girlfriend. It's all played for laughs and yet it's charming and sweet and titillating as well. American filmmakers could never make a movie like this. Our puritanical and uptight attitude toward sex in this country only allows us to enjoy watching others having sex in the context of pornography. This movie shows us that sex is as natural as breathing - only a lot more fun!

THE PIVEN-ATOR: Do any other gay men find Jeremy Piven as hot as I do? Is it that cocky swagger, the sardonic wit, the Napoleonic air of power that he demonstrates as Ari Gold on Entourage? Maybe, but for me it's his hot, fit little monkey-body - though he's very short, he has an incredibly sexy chest and a very round, smooth ass which he shows off to perfection in the indie flick Very Bad Things. Check it out and let me know what you think....I also think he's a terrific actor and have a soft spot for him because he's from Evanston, Illinois, where I attended Northwestern University,and because he was fellow Chicagoan John Cusack's best friend and roommate for many years.

Thursday, July 13, 2006

Alexander (2004): OK, so I don't think this is the best movie ever made, by any means, but it does happen to be about a great man of history who was in touch with his bisexual nature.I appreciate the fact that tough guy director Oliver Stone dealt with Alexander's sexuality in an honest way. The film also boasts lush production values reminiscent of epics like The Ten Commandments - plus male nudity. What more could a voyeuristic gay man ask for? I'm not a big Colin Farrell fan normally, but he's hot as Alexander,and Jared Leto makes a delectable Hephaiston. I even like Angelina Jolie in this film - she really is one of the most beautiful women on the silver screen today.

Who needs Botox injections and plastic surgery to look youthful? There's an easier and cheaper way to go. Try the Hollywood secret - Wrinkies and Frownies, band-aid-like tapes that pull the skin behind the ears and the hairline, giving your skin a taut and therefore more youthful appearance. They've been around for years - rumor has it that Lucy used 'em in Mame (along with Vaseline over the camera lens) and Rosalind Russell wore them under her wimple in The Trouble with Angels. Bette Davis reportedly hid hers under her bangs in the 60s and 70s.
Hey, look at what they did for Kennedy matriarch Rose Kennedy, who retained her rosy girlish glow to the age of 105. If Mrs. Kennedy used them, you know they have to be affordable. This was a woman who pinched every penny her husband made. She'd only paint the front of her Hyannis Port and Palm Beach houses in order to save money, leaving the rest of the building in peeling disrepair.